I've always followed Rawr's suggestions for upgrades and determining my stat priority for reforging. But since 4.3, it's been strange for me, particularly in its suggestions for my trinkets. It seems to think I should use Fluid Death over all the other trinkets. Did I just gear up in a way that somehow has me needing hit rating over everything else? I've never seen it suggest I go for hit rating, ever. It's always suggested I forsake hit rating in favor of mastery, haste, and crit.

Take a look at it yourself and see, you can either yank my character off battle.net, Mineko from the US Medivh server, or you can cut and copy the following code into the "import from Rawr addon" to see all my potential gear choices, including 390+ trinkets that it shuns in favor of low ilvl +hit trinkets. Then you'll see if you use the optimize tool, it doesn't suggest any better configuration.

I did some experimenting, and looked at another feral druid from my server with a similar gear level to see if it's just me. But Rawr has the same issue with them too, suggesting they use +hit trinkets like Fluid death way over the heroic T12 and T13 gear. I'm not sure what the deal is, maybe a bug with characters around the Heroic T12/Normal T13 gear level that causes it to freak out. Well, I guess until it gets fixed, I'm on my own for gear/stat choices.

mineko wrote:Well, I guess until it gets fixed, I'm on my own for gear/stat choices.

Use Mew or SimulationCraft?

The SimulationCraft script is slightly different from what Mew uses by default (missing a DPS neutral conditional that I intentionally left out since it doesn't use more than 1 feral charge) but the latest build should be ok since it it has a new priority list and Kiril implemented correctly.

I've tried both Mew and Simcraft out and while I gotta give credit to the guys behind those for their thoroughness and complexity, all the numbers and graphs and math fry my brain in ways that keep me from extracting any useful information. With Rawr, you plug in your character and it gives you a straightforward list of upgrades, and it'll even give you an optimal configuration based on the gear that is currently available to you. Granted I have no doubt Rawr has nowhere near the thoroughness of real simulation programs like Mew and Simcraft, but it was enough for me, and it was put simply enough that my simple mind could reach a conclusion without having a brain meltdown.

This is of course no fault of Yawning or the creator of Simcraft. It's a shortcoming of my own that I can't comprehend results beyond "This piece of gear is 2% better than yours".

In the mean time, I've been poking around with Mew, which is to say I've just been switching gear around, logging off to update my armory, then reloading my character and clicking Simulate to see which configuration gives me the highest dps output. Is there an easier/quicker way of doing this?

Lots of sticky notes with all the values hand written so you can just update them on the client.

I don't get it though I mean feral dps has always been pretty easy to find upgrades for. Is it a higher item level? UPGRADE!

Our value on agility is still so high that's really the only modle you need. I mean going from lets say the 397 rag neck to the 397 valor neck yeah you could use mew or rawr; however, even still I promise you the level of dps difference between the 2 isn't going to make or break any of the fights any guild is working on. To include those crazy koreans.

mineko wrote:In the mean time, I've been poking around with Mew, which is to say I've just been switching gear around, logging off to update my armory, then reloading my character and clicking Simulate to see which configuration gives me the highest dps output. Is there an easier/quicker way of doing this?

Not at the moment sorry. Tangedyn and myself have been poking at being able to import chardev profiles which would save logging into WoW but the code for that isn't quite done yet.

As a side note: Making the UI gear based was something on my TODO list from WOTLK, but it hasn't happened yet either.

Edit: The latest and greatest can import stuff from chardev.org assuming you don't use "Random Item of the Whatever".

I thought I'd pipe in. Ast has basically stopped programming Rawr, and I've kindof taken over since I'm the only other feral player on the dev team left. I'm planning on re-writing the Cat and bear module from the ground up. Partly because the cat rotation module was based off of Tang's old website script and getting ridiculous to keep up, especially with some of the set bonuses (T11 and T12 4-piece) and the over-valuing of haste. I'm planning on using a Interpolation formulation (which I hope Yawning would appreciate). This should give more real-world numbers. Just it is going to take a while to get right. I don't want to mess up what is currently in place so I'll be working on this on the side until I think it's ready. I'm planning on doing this also to the bear module since that is in just as bad of a shape as the kitty module.

As for some trinket issues. I think part of the issue with Vial not being valued any higher is due to some over-valuing of haste that Rawr seems to emphasize. This leads back to needing to redesign the rotation module for the cat. Also the cat and bear modules lack any real designated proc module (such as the valuing of crit, haste, and mastery will swing wildly due to the Matrix Restabalizer). It's loosely designed but there isn't much there.

Finally for you bears out there, I understand Rawr tends to favor Mastery over Dodge after a very short period of time. Part of that is due to the Boss Handler. If you are seeing Mastery over dodge, try using a higher difficulty. If your currently using T13 Heroic setting and it's still favoring mastery, set the damage from Average damage to Impossible damage. It will still favor agility, but the reforging should revert back to dodge.

Hinalover wrote:I thought I'd pipe in. Ast has basically stopped programming Rawr, and I've kindof taken over since I'm the only other feral player on the dev team left. I'm planning on re-writing the Cat and bear module from the ground up.

If you haven't already done so, you might want to take a look at the formulation module in Mew. It was updated when Cata came out and optimized in concert with the simulator. Obviously, Yawning can clarify what state it is in much better than I can, so you could check with him.

Leafkiller wrote:If you haven't already done so, you might want to take a look at the formulation module in Mew. It was updated when Cata came out and optimized in concert with the simulator. Obviously, Yawning can clarify what state it is in much better than I can, so you could check with him.

I deprecated it for a reason, it shouldn't be used for anything really, unfortunately.

This. Rawr was a go-to tool for the longest, and I'd love to see it be great again. Even if it's not as accurate as Mew, a "good enough" model combined with the paperdoll tool is a bit more newbie-friendly than Mew.

Hina, send me a PM/email if you need any web space or resources here on TFD.